Politicians Are People

This is an object lesson into why you should not invest yourself so heavily into politicians.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer has informed his most senior administration officials that he had been involved in a prostitution ring, an administration official said this morning.

Mr. Spitzer, who was huddled with his top aides early this afternoon, had hours earlier abruptly canceled his scheduled public events for the day. He is set to make an announcement about 2:15 this afternoon at his Manhattan office.

Mr. Spitzer, a first-term Democrat who pledged to bring ethics reform and end the often seamy ways of Albany, is married with three children.

Just last week, federal prosecutors arrested four people in connection with an expensive prostitution operation. Administration officials would not say that this was the ring with which the governor had become involved.

I really, really liked Eliot Spitzer when he was a reformist Attorney General, and his campaign for Governor was first-rate. I could probably dig up my "Spitzer 2008" blog post from a couple years back. His first term in Albany was tumultuous but he's proven himself a partisan fighter. But he's a person, and people have their own issues and peccadilloes, and nobody should be particularly shocked. Democrats have pretty much voided their ability to say this kind of thing doesn't matter, after relentlessly focusing on Republican sexual deviancy over the years. And that's sad, because it really doesn't matter all that much in the big picture. In the case of many Republicans, there is an issue of hypocrisy at work, as the ones most vocal about family values typically become the ones most likely to be involved in these scandals. And that's fair game. There is a kind of hypocrisy issue at work here considering that Spitzer ran as a crime fighter and a reformer, and he's broken the law if he's involved in a prostitution ring.

The larger point is that politicians are not demigods. They should not be seen as if they walk on water. They're people and they've been given tremendous power and that can have a negative influence. In the current primary fight, we should consider this and try to keep an even keel.

...What didn't become clear in the Sen. David Vitter case, for some insane reason, is that this behavior is against the law in the states where these officials are alleged to have engaged in it. Somehow Vitter avoided that and kept his job. There may be a double standard, but that wouldn't make it right for Spitzer, just more wrong for Vitter. The standard should not be set by David Vitter. If anything, this should increase pressure on him to resign, too. I can't see Spitzer keeping his job, so why should Vitter?

... Spitzer's comment was vague and noncommital. Maybe he's doing the Vitter/Larry Craig strategy and just waiting around for everyone to forget about this.